"All the Time"
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Despite the similarity in the refrain, “I got all the time in the world,” Tom Waits’ “All The Time” is not a cover of the James Bond theme “We Have All the Time in the World” (which, though it’s decades old, plays a prominent part in the new Bond movie). In this case, Tom covering Bond isn’t not as crazy an idea as it sounds; Louis Armstrong, who Tom gets compared to often as a singer, performed that one originally.
But Tom’s “All the Time” is an original, and one that falls right in line with "Ain't Goin' Down to the Well" from a few weeks ago, leaning just as heavily on Tom's distorted beatboxing. It also falls in line with the last entry, "All Stripped Down," in that the most prominent feature other than Tom's one-man-band routine is the crazy guitar (even crazier on "All the Time").
According to Barney Hoskyns' Lowside of the Road, this is one of the actually new songs on the Orphans box set, recorded after 2004's Real Gone. He also writes of this track, "Waits was stuck in a kind of self-parodying primitivism," which I strongly disagree with.
At one point I thought about including a covers section in each of these entries. I haven't (yet?), but Southside Johnny's version is worth checking out. It turns “All the Time” into a boogie-woogie piano and horns number, keeping some of the grit but adding a big-band veneer.
In a fun coincidence, on the Waits tribute album from which that comes (Grapefruit Moon, reissued earlier this year), Southside Johnny is backed by LaBamba's Big Band. They were the house band for Conan O'Brien’s television show after Max Weinberg headed back to E Street. And Tom appeared on Conan’s show to promote Orphans.
He didn't, however, perform "All the Time."